The Trump administration issued new immigration guidance Tuesday directing federal officers to evaluate whether prospective immigrants are likely to become a public charge or to contribute economically to the United States. Officers are required to assess age, health, family status, assets and finances, education, and skills before making admissibility determinations. It’s a common-sense rule. It’s also the law — and for the first time, it’s actually being enforced.

Daniel Di Martino — a Manhattan Institute fellow, Venezuelan immigrant, and economist who has lived the consequences of socialist immigration policy firsthand — explained the significance: “For over a century, immigrants coming to the United States have been required to prove that they’re not going to depend on the government, something that is eminently reasonable, but no administration until the Trump administration has actually implemented this rule.”

That last line deserves to be read slowly. For over a century, the rule existed. For over a century, it was ignored. The Biden administration didn’t just fail to enforce it — it actively reversed Trump’s first-term version of the rule, signaling to the world that America would accept anyone regardless of whether they could support themselves or would immediately access taxpayer-funded benefits.

Di Martino’s own research estimates the new guidance will save American taxpayers billions of dollars annually by prioritizing immigrants who are net contributors to the economy over those who are net drains on the welfare state.

The underlying principle is the one Milton Friedman articulated in the late 1970s and that remains as true today as when he said it: you cannot simultaneously have a welfare state and open immigration. The 19th-century immigration system worked in part because there was no welfare state to exploit. Immigrants came because America offered the opportunity to build a life through their own effort. Dependency wasn’t an option — and so the people who came were, overwhelmingly, people who could stand on their own two feet.

That immigration system would not work today. America has Medicaid, food stamps, housing subsidies, cash assistance, and an enormous network of state and local services. Without meaningful enforcement of the public charge rule, immigration becomes a system that rewards dependency rather than self-reliance — drawing people who can access benefits rather than people who come to contribute.

The new guidance doesn’t close legal immigration. It restores the distinction between immigrants who are positioned to contribute and those who would burden American taxpayers from the moment they arrive. That distinction is not cruel. It is the foundation of any honest immigration policy in a country with a welfare state.

America should welcome immigrants who want to build something here. That has always been the American story. What it should not do is subsidize immigration that makes the welfare state unsustainable for the American citizens already depending on it.

The public charge rule is back. And bringing it back is long overdue.